Hurting for a Very Hurtful Pain
by TheDarkFlygon
Summary: There is a constant taste of flowers in his mouth and in the back of his throat as he desperately tries to figure out who he could possibly be in love with. But alas, it takes more than searching some information on Internet and hiding your illness away to figure out that kind of things.


There is a constant taste of spring in his mouth, lately.

He was just a bit worried, at first: his throat hurt, sometimes he'd cough, but that was it. Just his heart pinching when he went past one individual. As to forget the unredeemable hitch in his throat, he focused on narrowing down who could possibly cause him such odd pinches. After a while, he had come down with a reduced cast of either Nanase or the manager.

What a coincidence, these two were exactly the cute ones of the entire dorm who weren't related by blood to him.

And then he coughed up a petal.

At first, Iori was intrigued as to when a petal could have entered his mouth in the middle of winter. He wasn't sure of what flower it came from, but it had an elegant shade of blue. In a way, had it been not covered in his own saliva, it would had looked pretty. As it was in his palm, in fact, it was rather disgusting. He threw away the petal anyway: it wasn't such a big deal.

After some research, he found out it came from a bellflower. Now, that was stranger: he could have sworn bellflowers bloomed in spring and were, in fact, dead during the winter. And they were: upon checking on the Internet and in a biology book in his school's library, it all got confirmed.

It's when he coughed up a petal again in class that he truly understood there was something wrong about the situation. Not only was this flower dead for the next couple months: there was no way it could come from the _outside_. In this closed-room case, the only thing which came to his mind as the taste prevented him from focusing on his Japanese class was how it could be there.

Or, more accurately, he was trying to guess how it could come from the inside of him. It didn't make sense, because he wasn't a vegetal, but it also didn't make sense for petals to magically appear in his mouth when he coughed.

By a simple thinking, he put two and two together: if petals appeared when he coughed, that meant they did come from the inside, and that they came from his lungs. It was the only place of his body where a flower had the necessary space to stay without him feeling like he was choking at every moment of his given day.

By that point, the clutching of his heart had grown stronger. Sometimes, it started to hurt so badly he had to excuse himself. Coincidentally, his throat also acted up as he did so, only for more petals to fall out from his mouth. After the third or fourth time that happened, he started to think this was more than a mere coincidence.

But even then, why in the world was his chest acting up every time he walked past the manager?

This was a very huge inconvenience: he couldn't talk to her one-on-one without his throat feeling like it was getting parched in acid. It just burnt. He opted for two different routes as to make up for it: sending most of what he thought about for the group to her through Rabbit Chat and taking cough drops. The first one worked semi-well, the second one was a total failure.

In the end, he realized staying near Nanase made his throat feel soother. As such, he could only conclude one thing: Nanase was good for his chest, and the manager made it go awry. Someone would truly have to explain it to him, but on the other hand, he was certain telling his bandmates about how he coughed up petals would make everything much harder to manage.

The petals just kept appearing. What was once one of them every few days turned into flower halves clawing their way out of his trachea on a daily basis. It hurt to get them out his system, but it also hurt to swallow them back in. Seeing as it got worse, Iori eventually resorted to searching what seemed to be a symptom on the Internet.

He needed to be reasonable and, well, he knew keeping all of this secret from everyone else wasn't reasonable. If he told the others about it, they could help him not feel like an entire lung was going to exit his body through his mouth every time he sang. However, the group needed him, their fans needed him, their fame needed him, and he wouldn't please anyone by being a sad mop crushed by some flowers.

Article upon article, scrolling through pages he never thought he would visit, he found out what it was all about. He cursed himself internally every time a single detail would match up to what he was convinced was now an illness.

Hanahaki Disease. The illness of unrequited love, of lonely persons coughing up flowers born from one-sided feelings.

He was one of them. He was one of these people whose love was eventually going to _kill him_.

He had three decisions opened to him: win over whoever he was in love with, take medical procedures to have the bellflowers unrooted from his alveoli but lose his feelings, or die. The third option seemed to be out of question at first: he was seventeen, he was an idol, he was going to live and make everyone's dreams a reality!

However, he didn't have the time to take in the medical procedures. Moreover, the surgery is dangerous: there is a non-null chance he may die in the process. The first option was the one which wouldn't involve getting hospitalized nor dying, but on the other hand… How was he supposed to win over someone he didn't even know the identity of?

He still doesn't have the time to do so, in fact. Not when he has to help manage the group from the shadows in addition to singing and dancing with the others. He's an idol, it's his duty to be twenty-four-seven here for the fans and for his colleagues turned friends. He just can't leave the manager on her own when he's been with her for so long.

In fact, he doesn't think he can be without her either. The manager seems to have a special spot in his heart. When she worries for him, remarking on how painful his coughing sounds, it pinches his heart differently than when the other members do. In fact, her voice soothes him but makes his chest squeeze. She has become his double-edged sword he has sworn to serve even if it pains him.

The list of additional symptoms mentioned chest tightness, dyspnoea and exhaustion as other starting consequences, all the way to fever and deliriums in the end. He sure had the coughing and tightness parts filled in and, luckily, he still didn't have a fever. Yet, he's sure of one thing: he'll withstand it until he knows who his feelings are for.

However, he found himself short of breath more and more often. Nanase himself told him about how he seemed breathless for small efforts. Getting told this from the severely asthmatic member of their group offended him at first, but in the end, the cuteness radiating from this and the good-natured character of these words made up for his offended hubris.

He has managed to keep it hidden from everyone else for quite an extended period of time, would he say so himself. It's not given to anyone to hide a deadly illness slowly eating his lungs away because of his unwanted feelings. He truly doesn't want them now, since they're both physically killing him and making everything else in his life a vivid nightmare he can't wake up from. He feels bad for doing so, but in the end, it's for the greater good. He's just a piece, a disposable one in the long run, in a machinery.

It doesn't mean that nobody doesn't have their little idea behind his pitiful condition. He looks drained and downright sick: only makeup and shiny, colourful lights manage to make him look any better than severely sick. In fact, he got himself on the bench from singing: his voice has grown so hoarse his own brother started to wonder if he wasn't smoking cigarettes in everybody else's backs. And if only that actually was on his volition.

He just has to hang out until he can write his will (yes, at seventeen) and tell everyone to find a new seventh member as soon as possible, before he passes away. Just in case he never finds out who it is or doesn't make it out of surgery.

In fact, Iori avoids looking at himself at all these days. It just hurts less. It hurts less to blissfully ignore the black crevasses under his eyes, how dim these look, his cadaveric skin tone, his messy hair he doesn't take the time to comb anymore and just how pained he looks all the time now. He knows they're here: it's just better when he tries his hardest not to think about them.

He has never liked mirrors that much to begin with, granted, so it's not that hard to ignore. What's harder is lying to people: he just can't lie. In fact, he hates that. If he didn't have to lie, he wouldn't do it. He wishes he could be honest about what has been going on inside of him, raging inside his lungs while he desperately tried to keep it away from anybody else than him.

He has gotten the time to notice when his chest starts to hurt more. He knows it hurts more when people worry for him in general, because it makes him even more conscious of his condition. It squeezes when he coughs, feeling like he's getting stabbed into the lungs as he gets the bellflowers out of there. But, most importantly, it was hard to breathe when he was around the manager, perhaps because he could feel her gaze trying its hardest to guess what was wrong with him or how to get the information from him.

He knows for sure he wouldn't be able to keep it a secret for very long: when he woke up this morning, he realized he spiked a fever. A quick glance at the thermometer next to his bed revealed to him it wasn't a tiny one: it had made him wait in anxiety, sure, but the number was impressive.

He's in the middle of class when the petals make themselves known again. He has just thought of his visit to the manager tonight as to explain to her their newest plan in terms of marketing the group, since the file he has sent her may not had been the clearest. He knows she's getting worried for him, as she must have guessed something was up with him: he would, usually, never excuse himself out in the middle of their secret one-on-ones.

It itches like the devil, so he decides to clear his throat. This doesn't serve much use: he still ends up getting thrown into a burning coughing fit putting ablaze his entire respiratory system. The heads facing him only indicate how noisy he's being: the class has stopped.

Barely rising his eyes, he notices the teacher is right in front of him. The latter looks at him with angry eyes and twitching eyebrows.

"Izumi, for God's sake, would you finally go to the nurse's office once and for all? You've been like this for weeks!"

He wishes he could reply, but he's trapped in a fit and _it just won't go away_.

"Listen, I'm not trying to punish you or anything," the teacher continues, "but this isn't any normal. Go see the nurse, please."

Knowing this is his only chance to be alone would he have to get out of class, Iori gets up immediately and leaves without saying a word. The flowers won't stop coming.

So there he is, head hovering over a toilet bowl in his school's bathroom, because the teacher kicked him out to the infirmary. This truly isn't how he imagined idol life to be. He's now certain half of his lungs are occupied by flowers he thought were pretty at first, but he was sick and tired (and more than literally so) of seeing them now. The pain won't subdue now nor won't the beats in his chest.

In a hacking cough go whole, in full bloom flowers. Their bitterness makes itself known in the back of his throat at every moment of the day. Their taste only gets stronger when he has to get them out, to the point of giving him nausea. His head spins a little from the lack of oxygen and from the chills going down his body.

Flushing more of the blue petals away, he just realizes how bad the situation had gotten in a couple months. He now spends most of his nights coughing away, outside because it wouldn't wake up the other members and not cause any doubt. He feels exhausted to a point no bitter espresso would make the trick. Everybody is starting to notice how he's withering away: he has grown quiet, almost meek, just because it hurts less.

He thinks of her again. Of her smile and the way she looks at him when she asks me if he's okay. It dawns on him. Of how he's going to disappoint her when he'll tell her again he has to go to bed early and not take part in management discussions. And there he does, vomiting even more petals, almost choking on what is the biggest flower of them all yet.

And it's red.

His mouth tastes like blood and flowers when it finally dawns on him. Crouching like a moron he realizes he's been in love with Tsumugi Takanashi, the president's daughter and his manager, all along. He fell in love with someone married to her job, who will never love him in return because she only sees him as a colleague, at best as a good acquaintance. He can now say it is: he is doomed.

And yet, he doesn't want to lose his feelings for her lovely smile and her kindness. That would be disrespect her: he can't be selfish when she has to be loved because she _deserves_ to be loved. Maybe he finally sees what Nanase meant by "I'll dance and sing until my dying breath": he wants to live for her and for everyone else until his.

But he can't die now.

A few hours later, when he gets back to the dorm, the manager immediately grabs him by the wrist and brings him to her office. Yotsuba didn't even have the time to ask him if he was fine for the tenth time in an hour, much to his surprise. He didn't have much time to observe everybody else, but he knows his brother was frowning at him. Mitsuki is just worried and he knows it, because his little brother looks deadly pale and just downright ill.

The manager has a similar expression when he can finally look at her. She's clearly angry at something, and if he had to guess, it's at him. He doesn't have the strength to stand up to her or to hide anything. He'll just swallow the bellflowers from his lungs and die. They'll find a replacement for him anyway, now that the group has become popular.

She invites him to sit down on the sofa, which he does without any added word, and she sits next to him. Fuck. He can already feel the alveoli of his lungs get tighter and the flowers bloom even more. He can barely look at her and barely reacts to anything around him, thus why he's surprised when her hand lands behind his bangs.

"That's what we thought! You're burning, Iori!"

He doesn't know if he should hiss at the coldness of her hand or just lean into it. He goes for the second option.

Tsumugi looks into his eyes with a concerned glaze. It should have never been her look, but there she is.

"How long have you been sick for?" she asks him, insistence in her tone.

"A couple months…" drips from his jaw, in an exhausted tone which only reflects his current lack of energy and sleep.

He has to come clean about it, now or never, or else he'll actually die, although the horrified expression her face distorts into makes him regret being honest about his condition.

His chest starts to hurt again, with even more intensity than it has ever done before, prompting him to wheeze as his cough starts messing with him again. Wet bells sit in the back of his throat before they make their way outside. His tears of pain make everything look blurry: he doesn't even know if she's still looking at him. All he knows, is that he wants this to _stop_.

"Iori? Iori, what's that?! What are…" her voice panics openly as he feels her arms around his chest. He would be bent over; would she not be there.

Clutching his chest with a desperate arm, he looked down on the blood-tinted bellflowers all over his hands. Their blue had mostly given their place to an ugly brownish red.

"I'm… I'm sorry, Manager…" he whispered in a cracking, broken voice.

Yet, all she did was to look at him softly.

"Oh my, I didn't know you were doing this badly…"

She seemed to know what he had caught. That was an oddity in itself: Hanahaki wasn't exactly the most commonly contract illness, wasn't it?

"Who did this to you…?"

"Manager we… We have to stay professional…"

Even saying that sentence hurts his heart as more petals make their way outside his trachea.

"But… you're… You're very sick, Iori! I can't just stay there watching you cough to death!"

She frets over him as a sad smile appears on his face. If he isn't honest with himself and with her right this moment, he'll never be.

"I shouldn't have waited that to get the flowers removed, but… The thing is…"

He gulps one last time as the roots over his alveoli strengthens their grip.

"I'm in love with you, Manager…"

He resumes his coughing right after that. For some reason, this fit is less painful than the others: perhaps his throat is so hurt it just went numb.

Iori rises his eyes to hers for what feels like the last time, thus why he has dropped the bravado once and for all, as if he had abandoned any hope of looking cool. To be honest, he's just miserable and he just _hates_ _himself_ for it.

But Tsumugi doesn't recoil away. She looks at him with pained eyes, trying to smile to him when she's just too sad to do so. He didn't want to make her sad, thus why he didn't want to tell the person who he had fallen in love with. Yet he did, and she was sad, and it was terrible of him.

"You should have told me so earlier, Iori, if it made you this sick…!"

He can't believe it. She's hugging him and _she_ 's apologizing for _his_ case of Hanahaki. It shouldn't be this way, but he truly feels like he needs this. He needs her warmth. He needs to hear her voice even if he has a fifty-fifty chance to die from the flowers in his chest.

"I… I feel terrible for making you go through all of this, I should have stepped up before it got too far… But, please listen to me, Iori."

His eyes weakly focus on her. His windpipes feel strangely soothed.

"I think I love you too, but I can't get it get in the way of my job. I'm deeply so…"

He clutches her against his chest. He doesn't even care. He just knows she actually somewhat loves him back and _it feels amazing_.

"Thank you…" gets out of his mouth before he passes out in her arms, the weight of the roots finally letting go of his breathing.

When he comes to, a few hours later, his chest doesn't feel like it has just went through months of vegetal pneumonia. In fact, if it wasn't for how tired he is, he feels great, refreshed. At his bedside, the six other members and the manager, all looking relieved.

He knows a lecture is coming his way from his brother and probably everyone else too, because he kept it away from them, but for now he's just relieved for everything to be over and done with. He can move on with his life.

And, dating would just get in the way of his schedule anyway. He's content with just knowing his feelings are reciprocated, no matter how slightly. It's also a lot, and it's what matters, he figures out.


End file.
